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Life of a Writer: May 10th

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Day 4 of 7

9:30 AM: I rolled out of bed at 8:30 but didn’t have my notebook next to me, so this is the first I’ve had a chance to write in it. I showered, weighed myself (delighted to find I had only gained one pound over the weekend, despite ordering Indian food, which is my current weakness), slipped on my “Monday Plans: Drink all the Coffee” shirt, and plodded downstairs, prepared to do just that. I had visions of getting some coffee, going back upstairs, and curling up in my pink chair in my writing room alternating between staring out the window and reading my Bible.

And then Daniel came up from his office in the basement and reminded me that the HVAC guys were coming out today. So instead I spent the next half hour running around cleaning for them. We’ve been (very slowly) working on deep cleaning the house, which generally means the room currently being deep cleaned is torn apart so we can scrub the corners and walls, while any rooms not being deep cleaned are ignored altogether. So I figured I should put things together at least enough that they were not tripping, and to incur slightly less judgment. Finally, I grabbed my coffee, which was slightly cool after sitting there waiting for me, and am now settled upstairs, not in quite as pleasant a frame of mind, but still happy to be here.

10:30 AM: After alternately looking out the window, doing my Bible reading, looking on my phone for gifts for upcoming birthdays, and writing in my creative journal, I just moved down to the living room to do my devotions so that I don’t miss it if the HVAC guys decide to knock instead of ringing the doorbell (we can’t hear knocks on that door to save our lives).

11:06 AM: Devotions are done, Marco Polos answered, and the HVAC guys still haven’t arrived. I moved to the dining room table, which is still near the front door, to bring up my computer and start working. Today’s goal is to use the information I gathered from the Oregon Trail game on Friday, compare it to data on Google maps, and review emigrant diaries to get a good estimated timeline for each important stop along the California/Oregon Trail so I can [finally] establish an actual timeline for my book, since currently I don’t really define how long they are on the trail.

1:30 PM: I have been working steadily, reading through emigrant diaries and taking notes on the timeline, as well as using the diaries to mark specific characteristics of stops along my California Trail map. The HVAC guys just called to say they are running behind today (No, really? You were supposed to be here between 10 and 12…I’m shocked) and asked if they could reschedule for tomorrow. I’m slightly annoyed, but not too much because in-depth, productive research always puts me in a pretty good mood. So Daniel and I are going to do our Abs workout, eat lunch (cabbage soup!), and then go to our favorite coffee shop in downtown to finish the work day.

2:30 PM: We have settled in at Shoes, ordered lattes, and are back to work! One great thing the pandemic has done…allowed us to work from coffee shops.

4:15 PM: Back home from Shoes, and still working away.

6:00 PM: Finally shutting down for the day, having established a very rough timeline for my family, gathered lots of great information, and feeling very good about myself. Tomorrow I will use the information I gathered to make a more specific timeline.

Note on Today/Tomorrow (May 11, 2021):

I’ve decided to take a break today from the 7 days in the life of a writer because, one, I slept in until 10:15 AM after another night struggling with insomnia and, two, I really need to do some house things and errands that are weighing on my mind. So it is going to most likely be a day of folding laundry, running around to stores, and occasionally fitting in some work. Tomorrow I will pick up again, though I think for the last three days, I might actually do Abby’s original suggestion, which, if I understood it correctly, was Instagram. While, as I mentioned in response, I tend to prefer just writing rather than pictures and videos, it would be a nice change of pace and probably less time consuming. So, Wednesday – Friday, watch my stories on instagram under @forestidylls to see my Life of a Writer for days 5, 6, and 7!

Life of a Writer: May 7th

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8:30 AM: I’ve technically been awake since 8:00 AM but Daniel was still sleeping, so I took it as permission to lay there and play on my phone, valid or not. 😛 Getting up, weighing myself, and taking a shower.

8:50 AM: I lost a couple pounds, so the fast did its job – I know it is a false weight in one sense, but it still seems to push weight loss forward. Showered, dressed, and downstairs, it’s time to scrounge for something to feed my growling stomach.

9:30 AM: I made poached eggs over sourdough bread with sliced jalapenos and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Now I’m back up in my writing room, planning to answer some Marco Polos and do my devotional and prayer time.

11:30 AM: I took longer than usual at my prayers and devotions, but it was needed. Now I’m ready to get to work!

12:15 PM: Okay, so I got downstairs just as Daniel came up from the basement, which of course meant we chatted for a bit, did our afternoon workout, and then our normal walk around the yard with our coffee. Finally going to get some work done.

1:40 PM: Okay, so after doing 2-3 days worth of social media posts, I may have gotten distracted playing The Oregon Trail game online. But in my defense, it’s giving me great information on timing for the trail! Heating up some cabbage soup for lunch.

2:45 PM: Well, okay. We ate lunch and then I finished my Oregon Trail game…everyone made it alive except me! Daniel left for the city for work stuff, so I put on a movie and am determined this time to get through the posts!

5:30 PM: I have been working steadily, and intend to keep working for awhile, so I poured myself some wine.

11:15 PM: I’ve worked with few breaks all evening – stopping long enough to catch up with Daniel when he got home at 7:15 and make dinner (salsa verde chicken on a corn tortilla sprinkled with jalapenos, feta cheese, and cilantro) – and finally finished the posts about an hour ago!! Now I’m working on some additional reservations, and looking forward to putting away my computer once they are done.

(In case you are wondering, yes, this has actually happened several times in the last few weeks – working until all hours once I get going to finish what I’m working on)

Life of a Writer: May 6th

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Day 2 of 7!

8:35 AM: I groaned as I rolled over and saw that it is technically past time to get up, but remembering I will have to write it down if I sleep in later propels me from bed despite a night involving insomnia and tossing and turning. I pull on jeans and a sweater, grateful for once that my winter clothes have not been put away because it’s a freaking 46 degrees out! And yes, Daniel went and turned on the heat for me.

9:00 AM: I made my way downstairs, managing to spill part of the coffee Daniel had just brought me, only to remember we aren’t making breakfast today because it’s our weekly fast day (another weight loss strategy). I hold a brief text conversation about learning past tense in French with my sister-in-law, gather my computer, et al., and head back up to my writing room to do devotions.

10:30 AM: I finished my daily Bible reading, an entry in my creative journal, devotions, prayer time, and meditation. I then wrote, for the first time in three weeks, my ten motivational phrases/goals that came about as a result of the book Girl, Stop Apologizing, which technically I am supposed to write every day as a reminder to myself. I always forget. 😛 Going to (finally) go through the emails I have been avoiding for the last week and catching up on online activities, but limiting myself to half an hour so I don’t get overwhelmed.

11:10 AM: Went through my emails, Facebook notifications, and WordPress notifications. Time for some real work! First up, getting a glass of juice. Then a set of pushups, followed by going through my California Trail trip spreadsheet to check on places that have been closed for COVID to see if they have opened yet. After that, it is back to my social media spreadsheet, now that I have finished blog posts, to draft captions for anticipatory Instagram posts and tweets.

12:40 PM: Only through the first two days of prewritten social media posts done and I was just editing ones that I had already drafted! Hashtags suck the life out of you. Perhaps I’m overthinking this…Anyway. I’m going to stretch, refresh my juice, and see if Daniel wants to work out yet.

Less than five minutes later: Daniel is in a meeting, so I guess it’s back to the social media spreadsheet for me!

1:20 PM: Daniel is out of his meeting and came to rescue me from the monotony of drafting posts. So we are going to do our Abs workout, pour some coffee, and take our afternoon jaunt around the yard.

2:10 PM: My head feels nice and clear again after the workout and walk. Plus I got a book in the mail! The Emotion Thesaurus. I have no idea how I have survived without it for as long as I have. It is going to be my constant companion from now on when I write. I am proud of myself for also managing to fit in a set of Triceps Extensions. And now it is back to social media posts.

3:10 PM: My brain is once again mush, so I am taking a stretch break to do some pushups and then going to write 100 words in my current novel, and then going to do a French lesson Duolingo.

3:50 PM: I also finished editing a scene in Picture of the Past, refilling my juice, and am now back at the grindstone. It is going better now, though! I feel like I have slowly but surely been getting the hang of it and the captions and tweets are coming faster.

5:00 PM: As it hits 5:00, I have just finished Day 11 of social media posts and am signing off. I think I hear Daniel moving around downstairs which means he might be done with work as well.

one – two minutes later: Daniel is nowhere to be seen, so apparently I was listening to ghosts. So instead I did a set of Triceps extensions and am going to curl up on the couch to read about Victorian terms and expressions while I wait for him.

5:23 PM: Done for the day and headed to meet Daniel out back to saw some branches. He recently cut down some branches from the tree in our backyard, and we’ve been slowly working on breaking them down the last few days, which has involved a lot of hand sawing. Good workout, but ready to be done with it!

And the rest of my day involved:

  • Finishing breaking down/sawing all the sticks! Yay!
  • Having a smoothie for dinner as a compromise on fasting
  • Practicing waltzing
  • Doing a yoga session
  • and thinking about more cleaning, but sitting on the couch instead.

A Hoot of a Hike

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Okay, ridiculous title, I know, but I feel like my titles to my posts are always so BORING. So, I went with it.

This post is going to be almost as ridiculously short as my title, but I thought I’d share anyway–I SAW OWLS IN REAL LIFE! I know this shouldn’t seem like a big deal, but for some reason it is! I had never really thought about it before, but I’ve never seen a real owl before.

Daniel and I were on a hike, again (we only made it two miles this time. sigh), and heard this strange bird call. Then we heard another one that sounded, you guessed it, like a “whooooo.” And then like a trilling response call, and we saw a large bird fly across the river we were hiking next to and land in a tree a little ways away. We both stared at each other, and were like, “Were those…owls?” It was at that moment I realized it would be super cool if they were. Dusk was falling so we couldn’t see super clearly, but we were pretty hopeful.

We made our way closer, and heard both calls again, slowed down, and shortly after, a large bird flew way up over our heads, landed in a tree, and, sure enough, it was two owls sitting there, chatting away as though he’d come by for coffee. I didn’t even know owls could make that many different sounds! Of course, as soon as I took out the camera, they sat there as silently as the fake owls we keep in our yard.

Based on youtube videos, I think it was an Eastern Screech Owl and/or the great horned owl – between the two of them, they made both sounds that youtube indicates.

Anyway. That’s all. I just wanted to share that I finally saw owls.

NaNoWhyMo

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Cheers!

Maybe someday I will start attaching pretty, well composed pictures to my blog post instead of grainy candids, but today is not that day.

I arrived at my laptop somewhat automatically this evening, without particularly making myself. So that’s good, right? Maybe I’m forming a habit? Although I think that takes 27 days or something, rather than just five, so . . .

There’s this thing about writing that I forget when I’m not doing it. Every day, I show up empty handed, wondering WHAT on earth I will write. But if I just sit down and write a sentence, and then another, it writes itself.

I find it very hard to have faith in this, however. And I don’t want to gloss over the fact that it also feels kind of like torture. And ones hands need to be actually ON the keyboard. If I sit back and fold my arms to “think,” I get stuck straight away.

But my story has been going in some interesting ways, thanks to this weird “where does it come from” aspect of writing. I started by writing a story based on the life of my great great grandmother, but my main character is definitely becoming her own person and taking some liberties.

And, would you believe it, I actually wrote a marriage proposal yesterday. Me! It was the sappy kind of thing that if I came across it in a book I was reading, I would probably roll my eyes.

Is it weird that I seem to tend to write stories that I wouldn’t, personally, read if I found them out in the wild? Or is that a thing?

Oh well. I think I’m three hundred words behind, so I’d better skedaddle.

P.s. 45 minutes later…..oops! Jinxed myself.

Just a Rainy Day

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Today it is rainy and cool out, but I don’t mind because Daniel has lit a fire in the fireplace. Which means I am curled up on the couch, sipping coffee out of my Anastasia cup, listening to the fire crackle, and watching the rain drip through the bright green leaves of the morning glories out on the fence. Below is a picture of when it WASN’T raining, but still beautiful.

It is astounding to me how, only a few days from November, I still have hordes of morning glories blooming, new rosebuds on the rose bush, and a plethora of flowers in the garden. We even still have some peppers on the pepper plants. Even after all these years of being away from Minnesota, I expect all plants to die in September.

But not yet, and I’m so grateful for it. We even still occasionally get a finch or cardinal at the birdfeeder. And, of course, the squirrels are as active as ever. This time, even the forks aren’t keeping them from trying to bury treasures in the potted plants.

And below, I’ve posted a picture of the “fall” flowers I recently bought for the front of the house, interspersed with fallen leaves, because we can’t keep up. 🙂

Here’s hoping my other Ingleside girls have a wonderful fall morning as well.

Arizona, Anxiety, and (missing) Autumn.

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I am actively avoiding A Thing, and what better way than with quasi-productivity, so one can convince oneself that what they are doing is Beneficial, if not necessarily The Thing.

Heavens to Betsy. Where even to begin? The last weeks – months, really – have been an utter whirlwind. I have moved from glorious Colorado to the arid, starkly-beautiful Arizona, a process that began in absolute earnest right after my birthday in June. That weekend, in which my dear friend Heather flew out to celebrate our birthdays jointly (with matching tattoos, no less!) was perhaps the last stress-free weekend I have known. The day after she flew out, our house was on the market, and of course an endless stream of showings means your house no longer feels like your castle.

Writers have the privilege of being able to skip over long, drawn out processes with blithe freedom, and I exercise that liberty now. With a snap of my fingers, I skip over the ensuing months, and suddenly, here I am in Arizona!

It is very hot in Arizona.

I have had a great deal of anxiety in Arizona. The debilitating kind, where your brain defies rationality and refuses to be redefined.

We have contractors, electricians, delivery men, bug-men (the kind that exterminate bugs, not the alien kind) and all sorts of men crawling throughout the house. The house in which there is no Internet, no couches, no kitchen chairs, no television, no peace.

But I have library books.

We also, humorously enough, live in a gated community. We thought this was amusing and somewhat charming initially, in a bit of a pretentious way – I’ve practiced wearing my chin “quite high at present” and sticking out my pinkie and saying, “ah yes, we live in the country club. Gated, you know,” with just enough of a twinkle to show how ridiculous we all know it is. But it turns out the guardsmen take their duties extremely seriously, and guests need an address, a valid reason, and a photograph taken of their license plate taken before they are allowed entrance. I’m afraid it spoiled the most wonderful surprise the other day when DJ got a call from the guardhouse: “Mr. Calvin? Yes, there’s a floral delivery van who says they have a delivery for you. Shall I let them through?”

Perhaps it wasn’t a ruined surprise after all, for if anticipation is half the delicious joy, my mind wandered most wonderfully trying to figure out who had sent flowers!

(Spoiler: it was Rissa, and I all but cried when they arrived, all golden and purple mums, a spray of maple leaves (maple leaves!! in Arizona!) and wheat; a reminder of love and friendship and glorious, glorious autumn!)

Our neighbors are proving delightfully friendly, and are extremely welcoming. We were invited to a social hour last night, and it was, indeed, the most social we have been in quite some time.

I have a lime tree by the front door, and two olive trees in baskets indoors.

For the first time in a looong time, I’m ready for summer to end. I miss autumn.

Did I also mention it’s quite hot?

The dangers of ball pits

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After three months of working out on a regular basis, I can do ten push-ups a day (with breaks in between sets of three), 100 tricep extensions, kayak for an hour before getting tired, and hike a few miles without an issue. But did all this prepare me for playing with children? No, no it did not.

So, we had our friends, who have three children, over for the weekend, which was a ton of fun! In preparation for entertaining all the children of our acquaintances, Daniel and I own a good amount of toys, including a small ball pit with 200 of those little plastic balls.

Well, one of the kids’ new favorite games became ball wars – in which we pelted everyone else with the balls as fast as we could. The night they left, Daniel and I sat on the couch and I finally complained to Daniel about how much my arm, particularly around my elbow, was hurting.

He smirked at me and was like, “You know that’s from throwing balls, right?”

Insert the shocked face emoji. For like 10 seconds. Me: “NO.” Him: “Oh, yes. Mine hurts too.”

Folks, I had to take IbProfen. Actual pain reliever, from throwing small, plastic balls! And I haven’t been able to work out for two days! I feel like my workout routine might need an overhaul.

Minutiae

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Not sure how exactly I have ended up over on wordpress this evening. 🙂 Maybe it’s just that everyone seems a little busy or distant over in the messenger chats and here is a venue where I can natter on for paragraphs and paragraphs without feeling guilty about being a pest or a conversation hog or such.

That said, I don’t think I have any funny stories to share (and isn’t that what this blog is best for?) So I apologize for that.

Anyway, somewhere, some time, I saw a recipe for a cocktail involving bourbon, fresh rosemary, and St. Germain,and I am here to here to tell you that that’s a good idea. Well, I had to substitute some crushed dry rosemary, actually, in this case. And I dropped in some lemon zest which was maybe unadvisable. (Chewing my cocktail over here.)

And speaking of DIYing stuff, I am addicted to makeup removal wipes. But I like the Yes To brand and it is no longer carried locally. Bah. So I had this genius idea that I would try to make some homemade ones. We will see how it goes. So far I have ordered some sweet almond oil, castile soap, and a bottle of Thayers witch hazel which is alcohol free and also contains rose water and aloe vera which were two of the other ingredients on my wishlist. Oh, and Frankincense oil. Because I read somewhere that it’s anti-aging. (Did I verify that before clicking buy it now, though? No, no I did not.) Hopefully it turns out, because all these ingredients have cost about as much as I spend on the wipes themselves in a year!

What else was I going to say. Oh, apples. Trotting off to a local orchard tomorrow to pick up a quarter peck each of Empire and Spartan apples. Ooooh…. Ahhhh… I am all of a sudden rather fascinated by how many fruits and vegetables varieties there are in the world that one can’t find in ones grocery stores. This orchard, in particular, says they are having a record breaking sales year. I think something about the current environment has people thinking more local, seeking out local producers. It is definitely the first year I have regularly bought things directly from growers.

Ironically, I started reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal,Vegetable, Miracle this spring, just weeks before the covid panic emptied our local grocery store shelves. So it had already kind of been putting the bee in my bonnet about eating local and supporting small farmers, and then WHOOSH, weeks went by when you could hardly find chicken, ground beef, yeast…around here.

I am happy to report, by the way, that my pepper plant has ended up putting forth four or five actual peppers. I used the largest one (which was still small) the other day, though, and I’ve got to say it was NOT the most delicious bell pepper I’ve ever eaten.

And now I’m going to end up throwing out and dumping MOST of the rest of my container plants. The indoor ones are still crazy with fungus gnats, and the outdoor ones recently got a dose of wasp spray from my well meaning and organic-unconcerned husband. 😛 there were a few days recently where we could hardly open our front door due to a plague of hornets swarming on our porch….I will keep a couple of the indoor ones and try to re-pot and start over. The eucalyptus, aloe, orchid,and baby rubber plant for sure.

Speaking of husbands, since he has started working second shift I have finally succeeded in losing some weight! Ha. It turns out reverting to my bahelorette eating habits is all it takes. See, I’m still cooking all kinds of Josh’s food staples (fried pork chops, hamburger patties, hamburger steaks, sausage and biscuits….) But I don’t actually feel the need to EAT this stuff when we’re not sitting down to a meal together. So according to my natural bent, I will eat less and typically leaner. Dinner of cottage cheese, some kind of vegetable and an apple? No prob. So now…. He just has to stay working second shift for good… Jk.

Hum de dum…. I have probably overstayed my welcome here.

So who else is ready for November 3 to be over?? Although, really, I’m sure the furor will continue well past inauguration day no matter what happens anyway. Ugh.

Welp. Here’s hoping you all have some blue skies and bright apples and autumnal breezes soon 🙂